my great vietnam Adventure

---

From religion to war

I notice the people here are largely Buddhist by default ie they do not all say I am a Buddhist but that is their main religion. We notice people pray to the many shrines that are in each house or in the streets as well as in the pagodas. They then leave a few bob for the Buddha in the hope of happiness and good fortune. If only it was that easy!Even the bank has one and they certainly need one at the moment for all the victims of their excesses. I am sure the Buddha would not be too keen to be placed in the banks now.. We have seen pagodas old and new and a million variations on the Buddha-fat ones, skinny ones, laughing, grumpy sad The smell of incense wafts through them. the one I like best is the one in Dalat which is new and houses about 100 monks and nuns and is a village of pagodas set in the hills -apparently the best fen shui in the country. We strolled though this peaceful place and I even did some mediation myself helped by the smell of incense mixed with sweet scented flowers. There are some other religions-mainly catholic as a result of the French missionary zeal with the highland clans and 2 hundred years of colonial rule. I am not sure where Confucius comes in-guess that must be to do with spates of Chinese rule. As with all colonial domination, there was resistance by the people. Whilst my mother was learning maths, french and good etiquette in her boarding school in Dalat, Ho Chi Minh was building a fierce resistance movement across the country. I wonder how much my grandfather was aware of emerging instability when he clocked into work each day at the Haiphong and then Saigon HSBC Bank. The Japanese threw out the French in the war and declared Vietnam independent under their protectorate (ie not independent) but then they had to beat a hasty retreat, and good golly miss molly, unbelievably the french reappear to reclaim THEIR country. This appeared to go down like a lead balloon with many of the Vietnamese, so the French appoint a Vietnamese president in Saigon. He is soon assassinated and they realize they are in a spot of bother and surprise surprise America wades in, first with some lolly and then the fatal decision of troops. Is this what we are doing in Afghanistan I wonder....We don't have too good a track record ourselves on the matter of colonialism etc
These thoughts pop up frequently when you are here because there are still reminders of the past-areas of jungle that have still not recovered from napalm, the war museum in HCMC and the prison in Hanoi; the cu chi tunnels which are apparently an underground kingdom on several layers that were created in the war against the French in 1945, and then with the civil war where the viet cong hung out. When we have met people they are keen to remind us that Vietnam is peaceful. Hanoi has a big sculpture in its central square representing peace. Over 2/3 of the population are under 35 so they look to the future.


Shop till you drop in Hanoi

If you love shopping Hanoi is paradise. Our very lovely hotel was situated in the old quarter. The staff were utterly attentive to us. All the traders seem to live on the streets. Sean was confidently knowledgeable about preventing jet lag after his trip to Trinidad. So he forced his poor aging mother to sight see all day after an excruciatingly early start from Bangkok. Ironically, he was the one who completely crashed out whilst I remained exceptionally perky. What helped was flopping into a cyclo (rickshaw) which also seems to navigate itself around the moped mania. We managed to see various sights and then Sean boldly walked into a street cafe to buy pho or noodle soup. This was a nerve wracking experience for me as a paranoid fresh faced new traveler lugging a bagful of medicinals. Whilst Sean slurped soup served from a bucket of gruel, with bits of indistinguishable meat thrown in, and some veg-all cooked on the street over a camping stove, I brought out my antiseptic wipes and convinced myself I would be vomiting for the next 2 days.
Each street in Hanoi traditionally was named after the type of trade eg silver street, silk street. Each street was locke d up at night. I guess they belonged to guilds. Amazingly some of these streets remain the same. Eg the ironmongery street -no B&Q here just shop after shop of ..well..ironmongery- pots pans pails brushes, nails hammers then the street gradually merges into the painting and decorating street and so on.

more to come.........culture, mist and onward to Dalat

---